Is Hezbollah using decades-old Soviet Tupolev drones as missiles?

Israel claims the Iran-backed group is using an early variant of drone technology

Ukrainian Tupolev Tu-143. Photo: Ministry of Defense of Ukraine

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On Monday, the Israeli army released a video of a weapon being guided into a suspected Hezbollah target, claiming to show a decades-old VR-3 drone, a variant of a drone originally designed by the Soviet Union in the 1970s.

While the grainy footage is hard to make out, it appears to show the front of the drone, or potentially a cruise missile, which would likely be an Iran-supplied weapon. Israeli spokesman Admiral Daniel Hagari claimed the video showed how Hezbollah was using civilian infrastructure to hide weapons.

If the weapon shown – seconds before it is destroyed – is a VR-3, it highlights the history of drone warfare in the Middle East. The Soviet Union operated an almost identical drone, the Tu-141, which has a much longer range of about 1,000km than the 200km-range 143 type, but the video is not clear enough to identify a variant. Both types could be packed with considerable explosive payloads.

The early generation drone, which entered service in 1976, is better known as the Tupolev Tu-143 and was used originally for reconnaissance missions, fitted with a camera and intended to be retrieved after use, falling to the ground by parachute.

While several variants have been updated over the years, only two countries still use the aircraft, Russia and Ukraine, for target practice and as an improvised cruise missile.

Most modern military drones navigate by global positioning system receivers GPS, operators using on-board cameras with a datalink – sometimes relayed through dedicated satellites – or digital radio transmissions that can rapidly “hop” between frequencies, to avoid jamming.

In contrast, the Tupolev drone was a Soviet version of an earlier US approach to unmanned aircraft, used by the US in the Vietnam War, with pre-digital electronics and high-frequency analogue radio signals, although the US launched and controlled their drones from manned aircraft.

How then, did Hezbollah acquire what is potentially a very old drone?

A possible source could be Hezbollah's ally Syria, which according to aviation expert Steven Zaloga, operated the Tu-143 and maintained a strong troop presence in Lebanon after successive wars with Israel between the mid-1970s and 2005. Heavy fighting between Syria and Israel during their 1982 war, which involved aerial battles over Lebanon, is seen by many as the first conflict where both sides used drones.

Hezbollah has access to more modern drones today, however, including Iran-made Shahed-136 drones that can be made with a carbon fibre, lightweight body, weighing about 200kg. The Shaheds can be hidden in small vans, mass-produced and used to attack at low levels at extremely long ranges over 1,500km carrying up to 50kg of explosives.

These can be used in swarms to overwhelm air defences and are far more portable than the 1200kg Tupolev, which originally came with a special mounted container.

This raises the question as to why Hezbollah might still operate such an old unmanned system.

One reason could be the sheer power of the jet-propelled drone if packed with explosives. It could be loaded with significantly more explosives than a Shahed and with a speed of about 1,000km/h, compared to the Shahed’s 200km/h, it could quickly strike targets far within Israel.

For this reason, Ukraine repurposed the Tupolev drones as flying bombs due to their shortage of cruise missiles after Russia’s February 2022 invasion.